Kraken picks up $7.1 million from new subsea inspection contracts

Kraken Robotics has secured $7.1 million for two contracts from the Newfoundland Offshore Oil and Gas Industry Recovery Assistance (OOGIRA) Fund for offshore subsea inspection scopes.

Kraken has been awarded $2.3 million in funding as part of a $4 million Fast Remote 3D Digital Inspection (FR3DI) Technology Demonstration Project to demonstrate the inspection of critical subsea infrastructure for Cenovus Energy and Suncor Energy using its SeaVision 3D underwater laser scanning technology.

The campaign will consist of several inspection scopes to create digital twins of subsea infrastructure as prioritized by Cenovus and Suncor. The applications include inspection of infrastructure in the water column and critical seabed assets including flowlines, spider buoys, and manifolds.

Under the project, Kraken will receive approximately $1 million in funding for equipment and salaries and will also contribute approximately $0.4 million in equipment and salaries.

The remaining $2.6 million of project funding comprises operational expenses, materials and consumables and will be supported by OOGIRA and project partners Cenovus and Suncor.

The project will see joint engineering efforts from Kraken and its recently acquired subsidiary PanGeo Subsea, leveraging an existing PanGeo sled design with Kraken SeaVision electronics and software integration.

In addition, PanGeo, in partnership with Memorial University’s Fisheries and Marine Institute, has been approved for a $4.8 million contract for the GeoTrac project.

The project will see the development of a new multi-sensor platform that will acquire high-resolution 3D Synthetic Aperture Sonar sub-bottom data as well as soil resistivity measurements for geotechnical and geophysical analysis to support the development of offshore energy projects.

Geotechnical and geophysical data will be processed onshore at a new facility located at the Marine Institute’s facility in Holyrood, Newfoundland. The project will contribute approximately $4.8 million to PanGeo for equipment and salaries needed to develop deepwater data collection technology and an onshore data processing facility.

The two projects will be executed from Q4 2021 through Q4 2022.

“Over past few years, the term ‘digital twinning’ has become synonymous with innovation in the offshore energy sector, and vital to corporate strategy as operators seek to take advantage of new and emerging technologies,” said Karl Kenny, Kraken’s president and CEO.

“Remote operations in the offshore market provide multiple benefits. These include risk mitigation as more personnel are removed from the offshore environment, significant cost reductions, more flexible and scalable operations, and environmental sustainability as operational carbon footprints can be dramatically reduced.”